It's been a long time and a lot of variations in the making, but Linux is finally uprevving. Linus Torvalds introduced the very first Linux kernel 20 years ago, and his new release marks the 40th major change to said kernel. Combine that kind of numerical synchronicity with the Linux community's passionate pleas to upgrade and leave obsolete features behind, and you're left with the perfect mix for Linux 3.0 RC 1, which Linus posted to the kernel.org mailing list late Sunday evening.

"Do you have any idea how f***ing busy I am?" Kim Jong Il's puppet roared in high-pitched fury in Team America: World Police, and we here at Maximum PC sympathize. It takes a lot of work to run your dictatorship with an iron fist, especially when you're trying to do so with a stylish sense of irony. North Korea's state-run television station ran a report yesterday showing the inside of a North Korean computer factory. Delicious irony #1: North Koreans aren't allowed access to the Internet anyway, and: Delicious irony #2: North Korea might not even be manufacturing at least one of the computers.

Much to the chagrin of Linux users, support for Intel's Sandy Bridge platform has been anything but stellar. Many hoped Canonical's Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" release would improve this rocky relationship between Linux and Intel's latest silicon, but according to reports, these new chips are still giving open-source users fits.

The Rasberry Pi Foundation is a U.K. registered charity whose goal is to promote the study of computer science and related topics, particularly at the school level. Part of the idea is "to put the fun back in learning," but what's most impressive is what this organization was able to cook up. Rasberry Pi's first product is a $25 PC about the size of a USB stick that's able to be plugged into a TV or combined with a touchscreen for a low cost tablet.

Don't worry about the cold and rainy weather sweeping through parts of the country, it's okay to bust out your open source swimming trunks anyway. Canonical today invites you to dive into Linux with the release of Ubuntu 11.04, otherwise known as Natty Narwhal. This latest Linux distro, which has been in beta form for about the past month, supports laptops, desktops, and netbooks, and supersedes Ubuntu Netbook Edition for all PC netbooks, Canonical says.

Depending on which market research firm you believe is the most accurate, Microsoft's total usage share for all versions of Windows ranges from about 84 percent to more than 91 percent. Microsoft is the largest software company on the planet with a market capitalization of over $220 billion, which is more than the GDP of Egypt and dozens of other countries. None of that means anything to Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation.

It wasn't all that long ago that giving your grandparents a Linux-based PC would be nothing short of a cruel joke, But it's really a testament to how far Linux has come, and in particular Ubuntu, that there's a PC maker who specializes in Linux rigs for senior citizens. That company is KiWi PC and they've just announced a new nettop they say is perfect for seniors.

Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, announced the release of the 2.6.38 Linux kernel, which he says includes "deep changes." It's the second major Linux kernel to come out this year, and it comes with a number of improvements that should have a positive impact on performance, making open source operating systems faster than ever before.

It's entirely possible for software to cause hardware damage. For instance, an overclocking utility, whether buggy or abused by the end-user, could potentially result in fried hardware. But should installing Linux on a system that ships with Windows automatically void existing hardware warranties? A reader who wrote in to the Consumerist is complaining that HP gave him the runaround when attempting to have the OEM replace an in-warranty battery on an HP netbook he installed Linux on.

Open-source stalwart Red Hat has announced an expanded partnership with Fujitsu to extend their collaboration to the cloud. These two have been partners for a long time, so it really shouldn't come as a shock that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is now available as a guest operating system on Fujitsu's "On-Demand Virtual System Service" public cloud.